I sent a voice note to my brother Muhammed - maybe around 7 months ago -, admitting that I probably should have gone to film school, or studied multimedia at university. it was his idea since I was a teenager. he embraced the part of me that loved photography, video and music, and he wanted me to pursue that line. back then I misattributed his reasons. two of his close friends had left engineering for successful careers in media, and I thought he wanted me to become like them. I didn’t see it for what it was, a sharp eye that looks into the soul of someone and knows exactly where they should be in life, just by telling them to do what they love.
And on this, a note about Muhammed. he is the best when it comes to telling people which direction to take in life. but not all his attempts to steer people end the way he wishes for them. not because they don’t see his extraordinary vision, but because people are often afraid of pursuing the things they love, for several reasons. feeling embarrassed, worrying about not finding a job after, and so on.
Before I admitted it to him, that what he was telling me might have been more accurate than I thought, that I was sorry for going to CS but I wanted to take this path too, a realization had already settled in me well. I have probably never loved something as much as I loved creating videos. I had my own infinite space of potential creative work, and in it I was expressing things I couldn’t put into words. this is where I started to look into myself differently by retrospecting the past, and knowing those attempts had more reasons beyond creations.
I wasn’t using video editing just for fun. the reasons that kept me making videos never surfaced while I was making them, but they directly reflected a state of mind I was going through, a change, a development. making videos and taking photos was the first form of self expression I ever put my hands into, besides writing. that’s why after every video I feel a relief for a while, something close to catharsis, and then a gradual suffocation accumulates over the days, until it leads me into the circle again. again and again.
couple months ago I was having a conversation with my mother and I asked her, why would you be gifted something in this world that you love, only to realize it isn’t allowed? not because it harms anyone,for other reasons, and it might include, that it is merely useless. I have read every book about music in Islam, and in late 2022 I decided to stop making videos that go against it. if you try producing the type of videos I was making back then without it, you find it impossible. I understand the reasons why, and I don’t fully object to what was commanded by Allah and explained through our scholars. what is written is written.
After that I went to vlogs and short films, with ambient sounds and no instruments. it was a desperate clinging, trying to hang on to the visually rich interface of After Effects and get the same exact beautiful feelings again. but as the years go by I miss the old me, and the places I could have been had I not left the first known path. I found myself questioning a lot of things. but never the love I had for creating videos.